Special Issue on 5G Communications and Experimental Trials with Heterogeneous and Agile Mobile networks
Sejun Song, KyungHi Chang, Chanho Yoon, and Jong-Moon Chung
5th generation mobile networks, 5G, are the proposed next-generation communication network standards. In addition to providing more than 1 Gb per second faster speeds, 5G will be a global game changer from technological, economic, societal, and environmental perspectives by integrating multiple networks in diverse sectors for various up to date applications such as the Internet of Things (IoT), device-to-device direct communication (D2D), vehicular communications (V2X), and disaster resilient communication. Currently, millimeter-wave (mmWave) radio spectrum between 30 GHz and 300 GHz is critical for 5G rollout. Regulatory bodies around the world are now working towards opening up new spectrum bands from 6 GHz–100 GHz, and new technologies to overcome the challenges of these mmWave bands have been developed. It is envisioned that advanced 5G network infrastructure includes ultra-broadband access, high-speed backhaul and relay, softwarized flexible evolved packet core solutions for efficient system management, and satellite communications as an inherent component of 5G systems.
In this Special Issue, we attempted to select papers covering both experimental trials as well as system-oriented issues over heterogeneous and agile mobile network environments.
The invited paper“5GCHAMPION – Disruptive 5G Technologies for Roll-Out in 2018” by Emilio Calvanese Strinati et al. summarizes the 5GCHAMPION Europe-Korea collaborative project that provides fully integrated and operational disruptive 5G technologies over a global scope. This article focuses on a subset of three disruptive solutions including high-speed communications, direct satellite-UE (user equipment) communications, and softwareization over virtualized infrastructure. 5GCHAMPION technologies are developed and deployed for the 2018 PyeongChang Olympic Games in Korea. Extensive real-field experimentation for evaluating the effectiveness and performability of these 5G principal features enhances real maturity of 5G technologies and applications for large-scale 5G services.
The next paper titled“Field Measurement-Based Received Power Analysis for Directional Beamforming Millimeter- Wave Systems: Effects of Beamwidth and Beam Mis-Alignment” by Juyul Lee et al. overcomes many propagation limitations of the millimeter wave (mmWave) frequency band by using an enhanced beamforming technology. Notably, To overcome the performance variation and extra power losses of beam-based mmWave communication system caused by the width and operational methods of beamforming, they investigated and designed directional beamforming approaches in consideration of the aspect of beam width and alignment effect.
The third paper“Stochastic Channel Modeling for Railway Tunnel Scenarios at 25 GHz” by Danping He et al. tackles high-speed 5G communication scenarios for the railway system. In support of the high-speed trains, the proposed communication system is designed to handle high data rate demands with seamless connectivity over high mobility. The authors examined and modeled channel characteristics for railway tunnel scenario with both straight and curved routes.
They calibrated and validated the target scenarios using a 3D ray tracing (RT) rendering technique with the “Mobile Hotspot Network (MHN)” system based measurements. Their additional RT simulation results at 25.25 GHz with 500 MHz bandwidth validate the channel characteristics models. According to the substantial experiments, they consolidated several channel parameters to a 3GPP-like stochastic channel generator to get the practical channel information, which can reproduce similar scenarios for both link and system level designs of the communication system.
The analysis of Open Loop (OL)/Transmit Power Control (TPC) parameters is crucial for efficient resource management of cellular networks. The following paper “Investigation of Open Loop Transmit Power Control
https://doi.org/10.4218/etrij.18.2918.2067 © 2018 pISSN: 1225-6463, eISSN: 2233-7326
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Parameters for Homogeneous and Heterogeneous Small Cell Uplink” by Amir Haider, Rashmi Sharan Sinha, and Seung-Hoon Hwang investigates the impact of OL/TPC parameters for both homogeneous small cells and heterogeneous small/macro cells network (HetNet) environments. The authors derived a novel mathematical model to compute the transmission power at the User Equipment (UE), the reception power at eNodeB, the interference ratio in the network, and the reception signal to interference ratio.
The paper “5G Network Communications, Caching, and Computing Algorithms Based on the Two-Tier Game Model” by Sungwook Kim proposes hybrid control algorithms for the Smart Base Stations (SBSs) using communication, caching, and computing techniques. SBSs become mobile edge computing devices equipped with computing power and data storage to simultaneously offload the computation from the mobile user equipment (UE) as well as cache the data from the remote clouds. The authors used game theory to characterize competitive and cooperative interactions among the communications, caching, and computing processes. Thanks to the agile coordination among the integrated approaches and the adaptability and flexibility for the different performance requirements, the simulation results demonstrate that the proposed method outperforms existing schemes by 5%–15%
regarding bandwidth utilization, access delay, and system throughput.
In the 5G era, as ultra-large content traffic such as UHD Video Streaming, Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR) should travel across wireless/wireline access network in mobile speeds up to 20 Gbit/s, all 5G mobile/fixed traffic has to go through the packet core network. The quasi-real-time management of these large-bandwidth consuming services requires less than 1 ms radio latency as well as the end-to-end latency of less than a few ms. Another paper by Taesang Choi et al. entitled “Agile Management and Interoperability Testing of SDN/NFV-Enriched 5G Core Networks” propose agile management of 5G core network functionalities. They designed and developed a novel solution using SDN (Software Defined Network) and NFV (Network Function Virtualization) technologies with PoC implementation targeted for PyeongChang Winter Olympics. By enhancing interoperability between two core networks, it can distribute 5G core nodes closer to cell sites. Consequently, it significantly reduces the backhaul traffic volume and latency, as mobile devices can download content immediately from a closer content server.
Thefinal paper “28 GHz Wireless Backhaul Transceiver Characterization and Radio Link Budget” by Marko E. Leinonen et al. verifies system level calculations and theoretical link budget analysis with conductive and radiated over-the-air measurements. This paper provides an analysis of this use case from a radio engineering as well as implementation perspective. Results indicate that the implemented radio solution can achieve 2.5 Gbps data-rate on average up to the 200- meter range as the target key-performance-indicator. Furthermore, their preliminary experimental results are presented as a proof-of-concept of a wireless backhaul solution developed in the EU-KR 5GCHAMPION project, which will be showcased during the Winter Olympic Games in Rep. of Korea 2018.
The Guest Editors would like to thank all the authors, reviewers, and the editorial staff of ETRI Journal for making this special issue a success. We are most pleased to have been part of the effort in getting these high-quality technical papers timely. The new technologicalfield of 5G communications and experimental trials will considerably impact the future wireless and mobile network research at large.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank all authors for their contributions. We unfortunately also had to reject some interesting contributions due to space and time limitations associated with a special issue and its natural deadlines. We are very grateful to the reviewers for their effort, and to the ETRI Journal editorial board and the editorial staff.
Sejun Song is an associate professor in the CSEE at University of Missouri – Kansas City, USA. He and his research team conduct research in the areas of resilient network and system management, software-defined networks, cloud computing auditability, fog computing, Internet of Things (IoT), security, data storage, and embedded systems. He received his PhD in computer science and engineering from University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, USA in 2001. He was working for Texas A&M University, College Station, USA and a director of the Cisco Test Engineering Center. Prior to joining academia, He has been working for Cisco Systems. A couple of his initiative projects became multi-million dollar network system products. He is a recipient of four Air Force Research Lab’s Visiting Faculty Research Fellowship Awards (2011–2015), a Cisco Summer Fellowship Award (2010), and has received several best research video/paper awards including Mobisys 2014, ICCCN 2014, and CIEC 2013.
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KyungHi Chang received his BS and MS degrees in electronics engineering from Yonsei University, Seoul, Rep. of Korea, in 1985 and 1987, respectively. He received the PhD degree in electrical engineering from Texas A&M University, College Station, USA, in 1992. From 1989 to 1990, he was with the Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology as a member of the research staff and was involved in digital signal processing system design. From 1992 to 2003, he was with ETRI as a principal member of the technical staff.
During this period, he led the design teams working on the WCDMA UE modem and 4G radio transmission technology (RTT). He is currently with the Electronic Engineering Department, Inha University, Incheon, Rep. of Korea, where he has been a professor since 2003. His current research interests include RTT design for beyond 3GPP LTE-A and 5G systems, cross-layer design, and public safety and mobile ad-hoc networks. He has served as an Editor-in- Chief and an Executive Director from 2010 to 2012 and in 2013, respectively, for the Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences (KICS). Currently, he is a Vice President for business affairs at KICS. He has also served as an Editor of ITU-R TG8/1 IMT.MOD. He is now a Chair of Expert Committee in SafeNet Forum, and a Chair of Mobile & Vehicle Convergence TF in 5G Forum. He is a recipient of the LG Academic Awards (2006), Haedong Best Paper Awards (2007), IEEE ComSoc Best Paper Awards (2008), and Haedong Academic Awards (2010).
Chanho Yoon received his BS degree in electrical engineering from Korea University, Seoul, Rep. of Korea in 2003, and his MS and PhD degree in electrical engineering, both from Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Daejeon, Rep. of Korea in 2005 and 2011, respectively. In 2005, he joined ETRI, Daejeon, Rep.
of Korea, where he has been active in the areas of implementing multiple antenna systems, operation of LTE in unlicensed bands, and non-orthogonal multiple access systems. He is currently a senior research staff at the division of 5G Giga Service Research Laboratory in ETRI. In 2014–2017 he has contributed to the 3GPP RAN1 meetings with focus on licensed assisted access for LTE and multiple access schemes for NR. His research interests include ultra-reliable low latency transmission, multiple access schemes, multi-user detection, and signal processing for wireless communications.
Jong-Moon Chung received his BS and MS degrees in electronic engineering from Yonsei University, Seoul, Rep. of Korea in 1992 and 1994, respectively, and PhD degree in electrical engineering from the Pennsylvania State University, USA in 1999. Since 2005, he has been a professor in the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, in addition he is serving as the Chair of the Department of Defense Fusion Engineering, Director of Operations of the Aerospace Strategy & Technology Institute, and Associate Director of the Yonsei Enterprise Support Foundation, all at Yonsei University. From 1997 to 1999, he was an assistant professor and instructor in the Department of Electrical Engineering at the Pennsylvania State University. From 2000 to 2005, he was with the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Oklahoma State University (OSU), USA as a tenured associate professor and director of the OCLNB and ACSEL labs. In 2017 he received the Academic Excellence Award from KSII. In 2014, 2009, and 2007, he received Outstanding Teaching Awards from Yonsei University. In 2012 he received the Korea government’s Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA) Award, in 2008 he received the Outstanding Accomplishment Professor Award from Yonsei University. As an associate professor at OSU, in October 2005 he received the Regents Distinguished Research Award and in September the same year he received the Halliburton Outstanding Young Faculty Award. In 2004 and 2003, respectively, he received the Technology Innovator Award and the Distinguished Faculty Award, both from OSU, and in 2000 he received the First Place Outstanding Paper Award at the IEEE EIT 2000 conference. He is a senior member of the IEEE, member of the IET and IEICE, and life member of the HKN, KIIS, IEIE, and KICS. He is the Organizing Chair of IEEE ICCE-Asia 2018, and has served as the General Co-Chair of IEEE MWSCAS 2011, Local Chair and TPC Co-Chair of IEEE VNC 2012, and Local Chair of IEEE WF-IoT 2014. He is also an Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, Section Editor of the Wiley ETRI Journal, and Co-Editor-in-Chief of the KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS). In addition, his Coursera (www.coursera.org) specialization titled“Emerging Technologies: From Smartphones to IoT to Big Data” (which opened in July of 2015) has over 420,000 visitors and over 160,000 registered students. His Coursera specialization includes 6 courses focusing on the topics of deep learning, big data (Spark, Storm, Hadoop), cloud computing (MEC, Fog), content delivery networks, mobile communications (5G, 4G/LTE-A), Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, augmented reality, internet of things, and smartphone/smartwatch design.
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